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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2017 Jun 21;46:71–78. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2017.06.002

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Novel techniques for visualizing integral membrane proteins by cryo-EM. (a) In the GraDeR technique [54], membrane proteins solubilized in an amphipathic detergent are run over a gradient, with increasing concentrations of glucose and decreasing concentrations of detergent. This removes excess detergent. (b) To assemble membrane proteins into nanodiscs, free phospholipids and membrane scaffold protein (MSP), which contains the lipids in a set size “disc”, are mixed with purified membrane protein. Detergent is subsequently removed. Based on [56]. (c) Three 3D classes of the membrane channel CorA in nanodiscs, showing that nanodisc size can vary significantly, precluding high resolution structure determination by 3D averaging. From [57]. (d) Side (left) and top (right) 2D classes of the membrane protein TRPV1 in nanodiscs. From [58].